Moms know best?: Children's evaluations of mothers' unfair responses to peer conflicts.

Research on children's evaluations of parental discipline or parental responses to peer conflicts has focused on parents' responses to hypothetical or actual child behavior. These parent behaviors are typically depicted as fair, reasonable, and appropriate, but what if they are not? In daily life, parents do sometimes act unfairly, or children evaluate parents' responses as such. This study examined 90 4.5- to 10-year-old U.S. middle-class children's (Mage = 7.42 years, SD = 1.70) evaluations of four scenarios describing hypothetical mothers' unfair responses to peer conflicts (unjustified stealing; intentional harm; accidental harm; ambiguous harm). Across ages, children overwhelmingly judged mothers' directives, particularly regarding a straightforwardly immoral demand (unjustified stealing), as wrong and very unfair, based primarily on moral justifications or coordinated justifications involving recognition of different competing moral (or moral and nonmoral) concerns. With age, children increasingly viewed directives to retaliate for intended harm as more fair and those regarding ambiguous harm as more unfair; justifications recognizing different concerns also increased with age, although more for retaliation for accidental and intended harm than for other situations. Children largely endorsed disobedience and attributed negative emotions to actors who were described as complying. Thus, children prioritized moral concerns over obedience to authority when mothers asserted authority unfairly, although their responses showed variability with age and the situational context.

Heterogeneity in children's developing moral judgments about different types of harm.

The patterning of 160 U.S. 4- to 9-year-olds' (M = 6.23 years, SD = 1.46) moral judgments regarding physical harm, psychological harm, and unfair resource distribution transgressions were examined in separate latent profile analyses. Judgments regarding physical harm yielded a single Prototypical profile, where transgressions were judged as very unacceptable, punishable, wrong even if not regulated, intentional, harmful, and as causing very negative emotions for victims. A similar Prototypical profile, as well as an Emergent profile, was extracted for both unfair resource distribution and psychological harm; children in the Emergent profile evaluated transgressions as more acceptable, particularly when rules and authority were removed, less punishable, less intentional, and less harmful than did Prototypical children. In addition, psychological harm was characterized by a small Inconsistent profile, where children judged moral transgressions as very acceptable but also as intentional and harmful. Profiles were differentiated by child age and authority independence justifications, but not by individual differences in social competence, gender, or act acceptability justifications. Children in the Inconsistent profile for psychological harm or in the Emergent profile for unfair resource distribution were younger than children in the other profile(s) for the respective harm type. Children who were classified in the Prototypical (or the Emergent) profile when judging unequal distribution were more likely than would be expected by chance to be classified in the equivalent profile when evaluating psychological harm transgressions. The results show that moral judgments are organized and reflect age differences in children's moral understanding of different types of harms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Are young children's preferences and evaluations of moral and conventional transgressors associated with domain distinctions in judgments?

The current study investigated associations between children's preferences and evaluations of moral and social-conventional transgressors in a novel puppet task and their links with explicit judgments in a standard interview. Children aged 2-3.25 years (M = 2.53 years, SD = 0.35) and 3.5-5 years (M = 4.38 years, SD = 0.52) watched two pairs of live puppet shows depicting actors committing a moral transgression and a conventional transgression and chose which transgressor they liked more, preferred more as a friend, thought was more wrong, and should get in more trouble; they also distributed resources to the transgressors. At both ages, children allocated fewer resources to moral transgressors than to conventional transgressors, but younger children's other responses did not exceed chance levels. In contrast, older children chose the moral transgressor as more wrong, more deserving of punishment, and less likeable. Preferences were associated with evaluations in the puppet task, particularly among older children. In contrast, all children differentiated between moral and conventional transgressions in their explicit judgments, with age differences found only in rule independence. More mature moral judgments, as assessed by latent difference scores reflecting moral-conventional distinctions, were associated with preferring to befriend the conventional transgressor and evaluating the moral transgressor as more wrong. Together, these results show age-related increases in children's moral understanding of-and stronger associations between-preferences and evaluations with age.

Young Children's Moral Judgments, Justifications, and Emotion Attributions in Peer Relationship Contexts.

Children (n = 160, 4- to 9-year-olds; Mage  = 6.23 years, SD = 1.46) judged, justified, attributed emotions, and rated intent for hypothetical physical harm, psychological harm, and resource distribution transgressions against close friends, acquaintances, disliked peers, or bullies. Transgressions against bullies were judged more acceptable than against friends and disliked peers and less deserving of punishment than against acquaintances and disliked peers. Transgressions against friends were judged least intended and resulting in more negative emotions for transgressors; actors transgressing against disliked peers, as compared to bullies or acquaintances, were happy victimizers. Across relationships, children viewed moral transgressions as wrong independent of rules and authority, based primarily on welfare and fairness justifications. Peer context colors but does not fundamentally change moral evaluations.

Moral development in context: Associations of neighborhood and maternal discipline with preschoolers' moral judgments.

Associations among moral judgments, neighborhood risk, and maternal discipline were examined in 118 socioeconomically diverse preschoolers (Mage = 41.84 months, SD = 1.42). Children rated the severity and punishment deserved for 6 prototypical moral transgressions entailing physical and psychological harm and unfairness. They also evaluated 3 criteria for assessing maturity in moral judgments: whether acts were considered wrong regardless of rules and wrong independent of authority, as well as whether moral rules were considered unacceptable to alter (collectively called criterion judgments). Mothers reported on their socioeconomic status, neighborhood characteristics and risk, and consistency of discipline; harsh maternal discipline was observed during a mother-child clean-up task. Structural equation modeling indicated that greater neighborhood risk was associated with less mature criterion judgments and ratings that transgressions were less serious and less deserving of punishment, particularly for children who were disciplined less harshly. Although harsh maternal discipline was associated with children's ratings of moral transgressions as more serious and deserving of punishment, this effect for severity judgments was more pronounced when mothers were inconsistent versus consistent in applying harsh discipline. Preschoolers who received consistent harsh discipline had less sophisticated moral criterion judgments than their less consistently or harshly disciplined peers. Results demonstrate the importance of social contexts in preschoolers' developing moral judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record

Following My Head and My Heart: Integrating Preschoolers' Empathy, Theory of Mind, and Moral Judgments.

Associations among hypothetical, prototypic moral, and conventional judgments; theory of mind (ToM); empathy; and personal distress were examined in 108 socioeconomically diverse preschoolers (Mage  = 42.94 months, SD = 1.42). Repeated measures analysis of covariance with empathy, false beliefs, and their interaction as covariates indicated that empathy was significantly associated with judgments of greater moral but not conventional transgression severity, particularly for psychological harm, and with deserved punishment for unfairness. False beliefs were associated with (combined) moral criterion judgments of rule and authority independence and inalterability. Empathy also was positively associated with criterion judgments but only for children low in ToM. Personal distress was unrelated to judgments. Results demonstrate the importance of both affective and cognitive processes in preschoolers' moral judgments.